4 Before & After Copywriting Tweaks to Increase Conversions

But today I’m going to bypass all the psychological reverse-engineering and show you ways you can improve the relevance and resonance of your landing page’s hooks from the instant readers look at them.

Which is important, because as avid users of the internet, we all proactively ignore so much that ignoring things has become the default setting for our us.

Think about it—of all the websites you opened at work yesterday, how many of them do you actually remember well enough that you could find them again if your browsing history was erased?

So when you want people to remember you, you need to do things a little differently than everyone else in your industry is doing.

And fortunately, it often only takes a few little tweaks here and there to achieve the resonance you’re looking for.

In this post, I’ll walk you through four different hooks that can very easily be made better with a few tiny copywriting tweaks and hopefully it’ll help you find ways to optimize the hooks on your own landing pages… so you can decrease your bounce rates and increase your conversion rates.

1. Sitefinity

Sitefinity is a content management and digital marketing platform that helps people grow their businesses.

On this page, they’re offering a lead magnet to help their prospects know how to grow their business while putting more people into their sales funnel.

Terms like “data-driven marketing” and “drive growth” aren’t inherently bad on their own, but they do little to speak to the actual pain points of marketers who would need Sitefinity’s services.

By turning the jargon on it’s head and incorporating daily pain points marketers face, I’ve made this hook way more interesting to their potential target market.

Think about it, do you think “YESSS!!!” when you read “Data-Driven Marketing”? Probably not.

But when you read “Stop Number-Crunching & Start Using Data to Grow”, you’re suddenly way more interested because I’ve promised to eliminate a major pain point and deliver the result you’re looking for.

2. Results.com

This company offers business management software to help companies look at all their management pieces from the bigger picture to make sure absolutely everything is optimized for the best possible result.

The page we’re looking at, though, is their hiring page.

The on their website you’d land on if you decided you wanted to work for this company and were checking for openings that fit your skill set.

The company makes it clear that they want only the best. But they use vague language that isn’t really clear how this differentiates them from any other company out there. Because we all only want to hire the best, after all. Plus, the talk of their manifesto is confusing. I searched their website and it wasn’t easy to find anywhere.

Here, I’ve used the main headline to make it clear that this page is about hiring and not anything else. Below it, I got rid of the confusing manifesto speak and replaced it with language that explains what they actually meant, but in a way that entices quality people to continue the application process.

3. HourlyNerd

This is a landing page for a webinar HourlyNerd hosted back in November on public speaking.

The first example here is actually pretty good—if they’ve done their marketing right, then the people who land here will be the ones looking for advice on how to not make fools of themselves while speaking in public, which the headline promises.

The headline promises exactly what the webinar will deliver—which is exactly what their target audience is looking for. But there is some missed opportunity to resonate with the audience on a deeper level and get them to literally say “yes” in their minds.

Do you see how this modification also promises exactly what the webinar will deliver and still speaks to exactly what the target audience is looking for? But this time, I used the main headline to speak to real situations and feelings the reader is experiencing and get them to say “yes” to what I’m offering not once, but twice… building momentum towards them registering for the webinar.

4. Co-Construct

So many times, good businesses fall into the trap of saying what everyone else in their industry says about their products. Which is understandable, especially if you’re just trying to get a decent landing page up and you’re not a nerdy copywriter that loves playing with words.

What results, though, are vague statements that kind of mean something, but don’t get to the heart of the matter and the reason prospects are shopping around on your site.

Co-Construct is a great company with a lot to brag about. But the fact that they sell a home building software is repeated twice, “#1 Highest Rated” is a bit redundant, and though they speak to pain points in the video, they don’t do it with their text.

In this revision, I’ve kept their trademarked statement at the top, cleared out redundancies to make the text more impactful, and used the sub-heading to both speak directly to the annoying pain points outlined in the video and show off their awesome guarantee. The wording is also more conversational and less “stiff professional”, making readers feel more at home on the site.

Conclusion

None of these changes were very hard to make. In fact, all I had to do was step back, look at the business from the perspective and pain points of the customer, and ask myself how this company could resonate with me better.

I tweaked the text to include a promise to end those annoying pain points, and suddenly the offering is much more interesting to potential clients, which would increase conversion rates.

Author Bio

Chelsea Baldwin is the founder of Copy Power, where she teaches business owners, marketing professionals, and other copywriters how to reverse-engineer copywriting based on reader psychology, brain cues, and thought processes. She also runs Copy Power TV, where she live-edits the copywriting of websites in different industries to show viewers how they can improve the conversions of their own websites.